Giant ICT strides by India

Professor Tissa Vitarana, Minister of Science and Technology said last week that India had made great strides in ICT and was able to achieve a considerable degree of economic development as a result of development of this sector.

“I was really made aware of the magnitude of this development when I was in Bangalore, a few months ago. It was an industrial town, not highly polluting type, but rotating around information communication technology industry. It was a lively throbbing town with enthusiastic young people bursting with energy,” he said at the convocation ceremony of the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT) at its auditorium in Malabe.

Prof. Vitarana explained, a press released by his Ministry of his speech, that at one of their ICT exhibitions there was a part of small companies which have been development by ICT people where a lot of innovative work was being done. “There were also foreign investors to find out what new innovative developments were there. Many of those small companies have already sold many of the patent rights for some of their products to firms like Microsoft and so on. Some of the products that are put out now into the world as products of Microsoft, really originated in Bangalore, in these small companies. It was really dynamic.”
He said many of the graduates would be going into already established companies like Virtusa, Millennium and so on but urged some of them to venture out to develop their own companies.

“One of the weaknesses of our education system comes out the lack of encouragement of innovativeness of fresh thinking, rather than just imbibing knowledge.” He emphasized on the need to not only solve problems, but also to come out with new inventions.